#MuleNoMoreCollective: Pay Us What You Owe

#MuleNoMore: Pay Us What You Owe: Black Femmes’ Intellectual Labor is Not Free — We Deserve Compensation

By: The #MuleNoMore Collective

Black women and femmes are tired of being your mule. A wave of Black femme activists going by the name “Mule No More” have started a campaign urging Black women and femmes to start charging for use of their intellectual property, whether it be published essays, video commentary, or social media posts.

Official Statement:

The principal dynamic that fuels economic violence against Black women and femmes is the devaluation of our labor. We are expected to provide intellectual, caregiving, and emotional labor to white people, non-Black people of color, and men for free, and we are shamed and punished for insisting on reciprocity in our interpersonal relationships. This shaming coexists with the larger systems of economic violence that Black femmes face in employment, housing, and other avenues of wealth. Multiple research studies have shown that Black women and femme-of-center people exist at the bottom of the US economy and globally wherever we exist as colonized subjects.

To that end, we demand that you pay us for our intellectual and emotional labor. That includes requests for help with academic research, use of any intellectual property like audiovisual media and published writing, use of any social media content, and requests for interpersonal support or caregiving.

What Black women and femmes are saying about the campaign:

“Capitalism is about the exploitation of certain people and a manufactured scarcity. Capitalism cannot exist without free and exploited labor. This movement is about black women and femmes first valuing themselves and their often invisible labor, and refusing to allow themselves to be exploited for their intellectual, emotional and spiritual labor often performed on social media platforms. We are unionizing the internet.” – Joy Kmt, Pennsylvania, USA

“Too often, we operate from a position of powerlessness when it comes to our relationship with oppressors. In other words, we take a posturing position, rather than one that demands justice and restitution. The fact of the matter is that what we do, and the content we put out, is work. It has value. Black women – as the heavy-lifters of that work – deserve to be compensated. Not only that, it is important that we never lose sight of the the fact that the foundation on which many Western economies rest was built upon the exploitative and forced labor of stolen African people. It is only just that we begin rectifying that injustice through the redistribution of that unearned wealth to descendants of Africans, however and whenever possible.“ – Brenda Nasr, Croatia

Tangible Ways You Can Support
Patreon: Patreon is a crowdfunding platform popular with creators. It allows artists to obtain funding from their fans or patrons, on a recurring basis, or per creation. Black women and femmes can use this platform to receive contributions from their followers, in a tier similar to the following:

Tier 1: White people = $5/mo. subscription

Tier 2: Non Black women and femmes = $2/mo. subscription

Monthly Blog Subscriptions: Many of the blogs run by Black women and femmes have options for donations and monthly sustainers.

PayPal Donations: Send Black women and femmes money for their content using PayPal.